We Have A Hulk

Do you know how much I love commissions? I fucking love them so damn much. And creative ones? The ones that I have to stop and really think about beforehand? They are my SQUEEEEEEE!

Hulk plus kid mashup.

What to do? What. To. Do.

BTW if you know the kid, please keep quiet since this is a grad gift.

I played with ideas of overlays.

I played with ideas of scenes.

I played and fretted and played some more.

My client sent me a buttload of photos (thanks!!!) so I had lots of room to play.

And I needed no more reason to rewatch Avengers than this commission!

Because AVENGERS!

I’m pretty pleased with how things worked out.

Once I had the idea, it was a matter of painting it.

“We Have A Hulk!”

A commission for Shannon

24″ x 12″

Acrylic on stretched canvas

No prints will be available due to the nature of this piece.

(Editor’s Note: Hi! I’m your friendly neighbourhood editor. And that child morphing into the Hulk? That’s my kid! First I want to thank Paula, because it is exactly what I wanted. The piece turned out amazing, and my son is going to love it. But that’s not the only reason why I’m sneaking my own words in here. I wanted to give a little background as to why I asked Paula to paint Keegan with the Hulk. When Keegan was very young, he had quite a severe language delay. As you may guess, this was very frustrating for him. He was in preschool, and found it extremely difficult to socialize and make friendships because he could not properly express what he wanted to say.This, in turn, made him angry. Really, really angry. Like…exposure to gamma rays angry. When he would express negative emotion in this fierce way, we called him the Hulk. And to talk him down, we called him Bruce Banner. It was something he could understand. That if he calmed down, and reeled in his emotions, it would make him easier to understand. In later years, we would just call out, “Bruce!” and he would take some deep breaths, count to 10, sometimes take a moment or two to gather himself. And now that he is a teenager, he can enable this very valuable skill without prompting. Emotion is a wonderful, valuable part of being human. Anger included. But knowing how to control it, without it controlling you, has incalculable value. I asked Paula to paint Keegan with his Hulk side so that he could see that emotion is a big part of who he is as a person, but it is not what controls him. He is now much more Bruce than his green counterpart. So again, thank you Paula, for creating such a wonderful gift).